Comparing Networking Options in Azure

What are your options for connecting to an Azure VM? Sure, a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connection will get you started but you'll soon need a full secure VPN connection. Azure can provide three different options for doing this: Point-to-Site (P2S), Site-to-Site (S2S), and ExpressRoute, but what are their relative advantages, and which one is right for the way you need to use Azure?

Byte Me: SOS

Differences between Delete and Truncate in SQL Server

Atul Gaikwad details the differences between DELETE and TRUNCATE, including how they vary in terms of being rolled back.

Row Level Security with SQL Server 2016: Part 2 - Blocking Updates at the Row Level

In this article, Greg Larson reviews why a block predicate is important when you implement row level security using SQL Server 2016.

Dynamic Data Masking

Deploy data masking as part of your SQL security strategy.

Implementing SQL Server In-Memory OLTP

How do you go about transferring a disk-based workload to the respective memory-optimized design? How do you process memory-optimized tables? How important for performance are natively-compiled Stored Procedures? Artemakis Artemiou comes up with a step-by-step guide to implementing an in-memory OLTP solution .

The SQL Server 2016 Query Store: Analyzing Query Store Performance

There are some obvious advantages to having the Query Store, but what is the performance impact that it is likely to have on a busy OLTP database server? It is early days, of course and until we get more experience we have to rely on Microsoft's estimate of a performance impact of 3-5% on average. However, this will depend on a number of factors such as usage an the way it is configured. Enrico explores some of these factors in order to give a clearer picture of what you should expect.

Adding PK Exceptions to SQLCop Tests

In this piece, Steve Jones shows how you can enforce a requirement of a Primary Key (PK) with a unit test, but also allow exceptions where needed.

Performance Surprises and Assumptions : DATEADD()

Aaron Bertrand explores yet another scenario where a date/time function seems to cause the optimizer to behave unexpectedly.

Step By Step SQL Server Log Shipping

Jugal Shah walks through the steps of setting up Log Shipping.